Destroy All Humans Remake (2020) Review:
Howdilly Doodilly My Name is Wolfily and Welcome To My Review of Destroy All Humans Remake (2020).
Originally made by Pandemic Studios and Embracer Group, and published by THQ prior to their bankruptcy in 2013. Destroy All Humans! is a remake of a satirical game that came out in 2005.
The Remake was published by THQ Nordic (different from the original THQ, and previously known as Embracer Group.).
Plot:
Set in The 1950s, The Plot of The Game is About An Alien Invasion, We play as Crypto-137 Who Gets Sent Down To Earth After his Previous Clone, Crypto-136, Gets Killed In An Attempt to Study Humans, and Make Said Invasion Happen, now we're tasked to do what Crypto-136 was going to do.
To Start Off, I think it would be best to know the backstory of the original game,
BackStory:
Destroy All Humans! was originally conceived by Matt Harding, who you may know online as "Dancing Matt", while he was working at Pandemic Studios.
Although Matt never ACTUALLY worked on the game due to feeling that he lacked the "energy or interest" to "spend two years of [his] life writing so, essentially this was his idea,
After Microsoft rejected the more family-friendly game concept "Oddballs", Harding jokingly suggested "a game where you kill everyone" (being Destroy All Humans), even thinking of using the concept of playing as an alien invader, which at the time, wasn't really something seen much in a video game.
The Cast For the Game Includes:
Richard Horvitz (Invader Zim, Helluva Boss),
J. Grant Albrecht (Bayonetta, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie),
Nika Futterman (Star Wars: The clone Wars, Psychonauts),
Bill Farmer (Voice of Disney's Goofy),
Fred Tatasciore (Voice of Scooby-Doo).
Graphics:
Now if you've seen the reviews on the original game and/or the remake, you'll know that they both did incredibly well. Gamespot scored the original game a 7.5/10, however, I'm not gonna be like those reviews,
While I do think Destroy All Humans! (2020) is a good game, and to prove that right now I'm gonna say that YOU SHOULD PLAY IT, to me, this game has some flaws that are very noticeable, and I don't know if it's because I haven't played the 2005 version and I'm not used to it cause of so (though I did look up the 2005 version on YouTube for this review), it's just very noticeable.
At Times, this game can be beautiful, but at times, it can also look very VERY ugly, most character designs for the humans straight out do not look great compared to the original, they were changed and they look awful in my opinion.
It's not so much distracting while playing the game itself as you can't really see the humans' faces, but in the cutscenes when they're talking and moving, my god, I couldn't focus on the dialogue when they were on screen and Crypto himself wasn't around to keep me entertained with funny tough-guy type one-liners.
The Humans look too cartoony and smooth for my likings, when their mouths move, it created such an uncanny feeling for me, compared to Pox and Crypto who I think transferred over nicely from the PS2 to current generation consoles.
I believe these reasons could be because it uses the same graphics type as "SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated" which was also a THQ nordic remake of a beloved game (click here to see my review of Rehydrated),
that games character models looked amazing, but that's also because SpongeBob is a cartoon, so of course Rehydrated would look great, but when you're taking that same type of graphics and applying it to a game like "Destroy All Humans!" where almost every character is a human with realistic enough human proportions, it just looks weird.
Now, this is a faithful remake (which I'll get more into in a minute) and I respect that, I just think that If the developers were going for a more cartoony texture (a.k.a the one like Rehydrated), in my opinion, the humans should have been modeled to fit said cartoony texture.
However, when we're talking about the areas of each mission, they all look beautifully recreated, and you can tell that there's love put into it.
"This isn't just a game made to get money, this is a game made by people who were proud of their original work, were huge fans of the original game, and wanted to do the 2005 game some justice by rebirthing it for new players to discover, while also giving the fans a trip down nostalgia lane, ALL OF IT REALLY SHOWS."
- WolfCrafter
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Something to note about this game going forward would also be that it is both a faithful remake of a satirical game from 2005 and that the game is set in the 1950s, so the developers played up to stereotypes of the time,
and while times have changed since 2005 itself, it's important to inform you guys that this game still contains the same jokes and references to politics and issues that were present at the time the 2005 game was made. It is offensive and slightly outdated cause of so, even the game has a warning message upon loading it up.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't meant to be a realistic depiction of the 1950s, that should be obvious, this game does want you to have fun and have a laugh,-
-It's just that some humor and dialogue feel even less appropriate than they did back in 2005, it honestly starts to make you feel uncomfortable with how much it's heard, and it's understandable if people don't play this game cause of those reasons alone.
I won't go into detail about what said jokes or offensive stuff actually is, just take my word for it.
Gameplay:
However, offensive stuff aside, the gameplay is still really fun, it holds up incredibly well, this is one of those "go here, do this, ok now go there, protect that, defeat them, escape quickly, oh and here's a bunch of optional stuff you can try to do." type of games.
This is also a mission select game, you can replay missions, but almost none are located in the same map and area.
Walking around areas with Crypto, disintegrating humans, probing them, throwing them about with levitating powers, it's just really fun man, there's been a lot of times this past year with all the news about bad people doing bad things where I just wanna throw them about with my own levitating powers that I wish I had, this is such a nice stress reliever! :D
You can disguise yourself as other humans and walk around pretending to be one, as well as scan the minds of humans to see what they're thinking. It's something I recommend doing even by just random as they can be some of the biggest laughs in the game.
You can also fly around in a saucer and do almost the exact same stuff but quicker and more powerful.
There are also challenges presented in the game where you have to race and such, all good stuff.
Ok, so that's pretty much all I really want to say about Destroy All Humans!, I don't want to talk too much about gameplay cause I do want to leave something in here for you guys to find out about when/if you play the game.
Overall:
I really like Destroy All Humans! There is definitely parts of the game that do bog down the experience, such as the offensive material,-
-But if you can get past that and accept the game for being a product of its time, I do recommend playing it, it is fun, creative, and although it's not up there as one of my favorite games of all time, not even close, I do enjoy it and probably will go back once every year or 2.
Destroy All Humans! (2020) Gets a 7/10.
- Pick It Up.
